30 civil­ians shot dead in Ghor prov­ince

FIGHT­ERS have killed at least 30 civil­ians, in­clud­ing chil­dren, after ab­duct­ing them in the re­mote Afghan prov­ince of Ghor, ac­cord­ing to an Afghan po­lice of­fi­cial.

Sus­pected ISIL fight­ers killed dozens of civil­ians on Tues­day in the Firozkoh dis­trict in re­venge for the death of one of their com­man­ders, a pro­vin­cial of­fi­cial told Reuters news agency yes­ter­day.

“Afghan po­lice killed a Daesh com­man­der in Ghor prov­ince dur­ing an op­er­a­tion yes­ter­day but Daesh fight­ers ab­ducted some 30 civil­ians from near the pro­vin­cial cap­i­tal and shot them all dead in re­venge,” Ab­dul Hai Khat­ibi, a spokesman for the gover­nor, said, us­ing the Ara­bic acro­nym for ISIL, or the Is­lamic State of Iraq and the Le­vant group, also known as ISIS.

Ghor Gover­nor Nasir Khazeh told the AFP news agency that the bod­ies were found by the lo­cals yes­ter­day morn­ing. There was no im­me­di­ate claim of re­spon­si­bil­ity. How­ever, Ab­dul Hai Khateby, spokesman for Ghor’s gover­nor, said that the fight­ers be­hind the at­tacks and ab­duc­tions were a rene­gade Tal­iban group that swore al­le­giance last year to Afghanistan’s ISIL group.

Ghor is one of the largest and most iso­lated prov­inces in the coun­try.

Its moun­tain­ous ter­rain and harsh win­ters have ef­fec­tively shel­tered it from the worst of the con­flict with the Tal­iban. — Aj Jazeera